Could you elaborate on that?  Can I research beam, missile & mass driver simultaneously, but not defenses?  I don't seem to be able to do that.  Why would researching 1 area prevent me from researching another if I have several research facilities?  How can I complete something and the next in line after it in the same turn?  What exactly determines the tech output?  I set up research on every planet I colonize.  In one game, I even found a planet that had a 700% space & a 300% space so I set up 2 research centers there.

The basic answer is you can only research ONE tech at a time. However, if you have a very large research output applied to a cheap tech, you will produce more research points than that tech requires, and the overflow will be applied to the next tech in line.

Giving random numbers pulled out of my ass to illustrate the point:

Say you have an output of 1000 points, and you are researching Lasers 1, which costs 200 points to research. When Lasers 1 is finished, the remaining 800 points will be applied to Lasers 2, which costs 250 points. The remaining 550 would then be applied to Lasers 3, then Lasers 4, until you run out of research output for that turn. At the end of the turn, you will see three or four techs show up as being researched that turn, even though you were only "officially" allowed to research one tech each turn.

Exceptions to the above: you are limited to reseaching N+1 techs per turn, where N is the number of colonies you own. Very rarely will a beginner run into that problem.

If you run into the end of a line of research (such as the final beam weapon Doom Ray), any research output you have beyond what you need to research that tech is simply lost.

There are other circumstances that can result in getting the research complete screen, such as trading for techs, stealing a tech through espionage or invasion, or a vote from the United Planets that forces tech sharing.

Occasionally, anomalies will give you direct bonus research points, equal to 25% of what you are currently researching. If this results in finishing the tech, you get an opportunity to choose another research topic before the rest of the turn processes. This can result in getting techs from two lines in the same turn, but only because one of them was not due to direct research output.

There are a few other minor bits I'm sure I missed, but those are the highlights and major exceptions.

Research is an empire-wide aggregate value, it sounds like you are looking at an individual planet. At the top of the research screen you should be able to see the total research output for your empire.

Research output on each planet is based on the structures on the planet. If you highlight a research building, it will tell you its maximum output as well as a maintenance cost per turn. Bonus tiles will increase the output of a research building placed on that tile by the listed percentage - you effectively get 2, 4, or 8 buildings worth of research for the cost of one building's maintenance. Bonus tiles do NOT affect any structure that gives +% to research. The original colony structure gives a pretty good research output, so even planets without labs contribute to empire research.

I said the building description shows the building's *maximum* output. the actual output you get from the lab is based on the % of funding you set on the domestic policy screen. You have to split funding between military, social, and research, and this split affects your output. A base colony structure gives 10 max research points IIRC, but if your empire is set to 40% research spending you will only see 4 of those points. The research output you see on the planet you highlighted is found by totalling the max output of all structures on the planet (accounting for bonuses), then multiplying by your research funding % and rounding down. That per-planet number is then totaled for all planets you own and that is your empire research output.

Ringed planets are actually *better* at research. They receive a 10% bonus to all research output on that planet, altough IIRC there was a bug at one point where the bonus didn't work in some versions of the game. You didn't specify which if any expansion you were playing. All data given here is for Twilight of the Arnor, although most of it applies generally.

How much research is needed to remove a week from the completion time varies between techs. The completion time listed is simply the cost of the tech divided by your research output, rounded up. For a tech costing 100 points, an empire producing 50 points and 99 points will both say two weeks to complete, but the 99 point empire will have 98 points overflow to the next tech on the second week as described above.

I am still new to the game so I haven't gotten into messing around with everything.  I have not adjusted the spending percentages so my research is at either 33% or 34%.

Another question:  Can I select a tech to research that is 2 steps out as a way of guiding those extra points of research when the prerequisite tech is completed?  (Example: selecting Aquatic or Heavy Gravity world thereby pulling the research through Advanced Colonization)

Pull-Through is a marketing strategy.  It doesn't work in GCII.  Read Willy's post carefully.  It explains it very well.  The actual cost of a given tech is delineated in DL and DA XML, not in TA.  However, even these values are nebulous.  It's probably based on "normal" tech rate.  To compound the confusion, there are bonuses for base tech spending. 

Choosing the correct tech is more important than how much you spend.

You can't "guide" the overflow points.  That's one thing that's kind of annoying, when you're blasting through a branch on the tree and it plows straight ahead all the time.  It's actually the order in the list of techs contained in the TechTree.xml file that determines where the overflow points go and the order you see the branches in the tree view.  However, when you get to the end of a branch, those overflow points end up in the bit bucket.  The game doesn't send them to the next branch.  For social and military production, overflow points always end up in the bit bucket.  At least you don't totally lose them for tech. 

You can adjust spending to avoid losing overflow points.  That way, those unneeded points will end up as cash instead of going to overflow oblivion.  That's probably not something the OP is ready to think about at this point, but for more experienced players on higher difficulty levels, it's important, especially in the early game.

Jeez, harden up! Where's the rule that says you have to win every single computer game you play? If thats what you want, use the cheat modes, you can finish all research in one turn. Of course then you'd have to find something else to pi$$ and moan about, though I get the feeling that wouldn't be a problem for you....

It wouldn't be such a big deal on a tactical scale.  You win some, you lose some.  As I said, on a campaign scale, the amount of time involved in a "practice" game just trying to get the hang of it gets annoying, meaning not fun, meaning it defeats the purpose of a game that is supposed to be fun.  Not so much a rule as being practical.  Now, getting back to the constructive comments on this thread, meaning all but yours, I'll look for the "sandbox" games, and see what happens.  How do I get to the "sandbox" battles.  All I see is the campaign option.

When you launch the game, select "new game". In Twilight it is the top button, I don't remember exactly where it was in the earlier versions.

It will simply move your alignment more to the side of the type of your choice - if you choose the evil option, it will move the ethics slider (I think you use F6 to view it) more to the evil side and the like. However, your actual alignment is not final until you research Xeno Ethics and choose Evil, Neutral or Good. This choice is final. The cost of making this choice is determined by where your slider currently is. If you have made evil choices (a good idea) and your slider is towards evil; and you want your alignment to be good, you will have to pay through your nose. The more the difference the more the cost.

Personally, I made the mistake of going good many times in the past, but I now firmly believe that there is no point to it. Evil is by FAR the better choice, although I don't dislike neutral either. Good seems to be a complete waste to me.

In the VIDEO options, you can select to run the game in windowed mode, which makes switching to other programs a cakewalk, even on my 4 year old P4!

Of course, I completely agree with you. That is also one of the reasons why we (me and my friend when I didn't have the game) usually chose neutral many times even when we were looking at +30-50% research bonus! I don't think I have the patience for gigantic galaxies and points grinding, so I think I will look for other medals, like the racial victory medal. Or maybe I will be the few good/neutral members of the Kzinti Empire

BTW, I have a question. In my current game, I chose the evil option while colonization and it says +14% starship bonus. What exactly does that mean? Bonus to the production of starship? Or maybe to its hitpoints!

Hi!

That's the bonus to weapons' attack (not to defenses,  valid for DL and DA, should be valid for TA), but just for ships built on that planet. DA handles that bonus as a supershot.

Wiki - DA ship combat: "attack bonuses from weapons are handled as a supershot. They are all added to the first shot from the first weapon on a ship. This is the reason of "unexplainably" high damage a well-defended ship sometimes gets in combat"

BR,  Iztok